CHAPTER V.1824-27.THE LAST QUARTETS.
1824-27.
THE LAST QUARTETS.
Berlioz on the Lot of Artists—Beethoven Misunderstood—The Great Concert of May, 1824—Preparation for It—Small Returns—Beethoven Appreciated—First Performance of the Missa Solemnis and of the Ninth Symphony—The Quartets—An “Oratorio for Boston”—Overture on B-A-C-H—Influence of His Personal Experience on His Works—His Brother Johann—Postponement of His Journey to London—Presentiment of Death—The Restoration of Metternich and Gentz—His “Son”—Troubles with the Young Man—Debility—Calls for Dr. Malfatti—Poverty—The “Magnanimous” English—Calls a Clergyman—His Death.
Berlioz on the Lot of Artists—Beethoven Misunderstood—The Great Concert of May, 1824—Preparation for It—Small Returns—Beethoven Appreciated—First Performance of the Missa Solemnis and of the Ninth Symphony—The Quartets—An “Oratorio for Boston”—Overture on B-A-C-H—Influence of His Personal Experience on His Works—His Brother Johann—Postponement of His Journey to London—Presentiment of Death—The Restoration of Metternich and Gentz—His “Son”—Troubles with the Young Man—Debility—Calls for Dr. Malfatti—Poverty—The “Magnanimous” English—Calls a Clergyman—His Death.
“Noblesouls fall usually only because they do not know the mournful but incontestable truth that, considering our present customs and political institutions, the artist has more to suffer in proportion as he is a genuine artist. The more original and gigantic his works are, the more severely is he punished for the effects they produce. The swifter and sublimer his thoughts, the more does he vanish from the dim vision of the multitude.”Thus did Beethoven’s direct successor in art, Hector Berlioz, complain at the end of his days; and to whom can what he says here be applied with more propriety than to our artist, especially at this period of his life, when his thoughts took their sublimest flight? His action now seemed indeed to assure him unconditional victory, even in his immediate environment—we are approaching the celebrated concert of May, 1824—but how soon shall we see him again misunderstood by the crowd and, as a consequence, lonelier than ever before.
He had again enjoyed to the full the “higher life which art and science imply, and which they give it to us to hope for;” and he, in consequence, became exceedingly neglectful of himself; so that his brother found it necessary to say to him: “You must buy yourself a new hat to-morrow. The people make merry at your expense because you have so bad a hat.” But now that the “colossal creation” was finished, even to the last iota, he began to be in better humor, to stroll about the streets gazing at the show-windows, and to salute many an old friend, as, for instance, his former teacher,Schenk, more warmly. His name was now more frequently on the lips of friends, and when it was known that a great symphony, as well as the Mass, was finished, people recalled the boundless rapture of the years 1813-14; and a letter signed by men of the higher classes of society—men whom Beethoven himself loved and honored—invited him, in February, 1824, to abstain no longer from the performance of something great. And, indeed, the Italianrouladeand all kinds of purely externalbravourahad obtained supremacy in Vienna. The “second childhood of taste” threatened to follow the “golden age of art.” It was hoped that home art would receive new life from Beethoven, who, in his own sphere, had no equal, and that, thanks to his influence, the true and the beautiful would rule supreme again.
Schindler found him with the manuscript in his hand. “It is very pretty! I am glad!” Beethoven said, in a very peculiar tone. And another hope was bound up with this. He hoped to obtain compensation for his long labor, and, in this way, leisure to produce something new worthy of his genius. The preparationfor the concert was attended by very much that was disagreeable. His own want of resolution and suspicious manner contributed their share to this. With the most splenetic humor, he writes: “After six weeks’ vexation, I am boiled, stewed, roasted.” And when several of his more intimate friends, like Count Lichnowsky, Schuppanzigh and Schindler, resorted to a little subterfuge to make him come to some resolve, he said: “I despise deceit. Visit me no more. And let him visit me no more. I’m not giving a party.” But, on the other hand, the first violinists of the city—Schuppanzigh, Mayseder and Boehm, who is still living—together withcapellmeisterUmlauf, were at the head of the orchestra, while a large number of amateurs were ready to lend their assistance at a moment’s notice. Their motto was: “Anything and everything for Beethoven!” And thus the preparations for the performance of Beethoven’s great creations were begun.
“Just as if there were words beneath them?” asked Schindler, speaking of the powerful recitatives of the basses in the Ninth Symphony. Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger, bothsubsequently so celebrated, found it exceedingly difficult to execute the solos in the Mass and thefinale; but to all prayers that they might be changed, Beethoven had only one answer: “No!” To which Henriette finally replied: “Well, in God’s name, let us torment ourselves a little longer, take a little more trouble, and attempt it.” The performance was to occur on the 7th of May. That “rare, noble man,” Brunswick had, as he said, brought “four ears” with him, that he might not lose a single note. Frau von Ertmann was again in Vienna. The boxes were all soon taken, and many seats were sold at a premium. Beethoven personally invited the court. His trusted servant, who was specially helpful to him on this occasion, said to him: “We shall take your green coat with us, too; the theater is dark; no one can see us. O my great master, not a black dress coat have you in your possession.” The house was crowded to over-fullness. Only the court box was almost empty, on account of the Emperor’s absence. Beethoven’s attendant again tells us: “His reception was more than imperial; at the fourth round of applause, the people became vociferous.”And Boehm tells us how the tears rushed into his own and Mayseder’s eyes at the very beginning. And what a success the performance was!
In one of the accounts of it that have come down to us, we read: “Never in my life did I hear such tempestuous and at the same time such hearty applause. At one place—where the kettle-drums so boldly take up the rhythmicmotivealone—the second movement of the symphony was totally interrupted by the applause; the tears stood in the eyes of the performers; Beethoven, however, contrived to wield the baton until Umlauf called his attention to the action of the audience by a motion of his hand. He looked at them and bowed in a very composed way.” At the close the applause was greater still. Yet, strange to say, the man who was the cause of it all again turned his back to the enthusiastic audience. At this juncture, the happy thought occurred to Unger to wheel Beethoven about towards the audience, and to ask him to notice their applause with their waving of hats and handkerchiefs. He testified his gratitude simply by bowing, and this was the signal for thebreaking forth of a jubilation such as had scarcely ever before been heard in a theater, and which it seemed would never end. The next day, we read, in his conversation leaves, what some one said to him: “Everybody is shattered and crushed by the magnitude of your works.”
And now, what of the pecuniary success of the performance? It was measured by about one hundred and twenty marks. The expenses attending it had been too great. Besides, regular subscribers, entitled to their seats in boxes, did not pay a farthing for this concert. The court did not send in a penny, which, however, they were wont not to fail to do on the occasion of the commonest benefits. When Beethoven reached his home, Schindler handed him the account of the receipts. “When he saw it, he broke down entirely. We took him and laid him on the sofa. We remained at his side until late in the night. He asked neither for food nor for anything else. Not an audible word did he utter. At last, when we observed that Morpheus had gently closed his eyes, we retired. His servant found him next morning in his concert toilette (his green dress coat)in the same place, asleep.” This account is by Schindler, who, together with the young official, Joseph Huettenbrenner, one of Franz Schubert’s intimate friends, had taken him home on this occasion.
This was the first performance of theMissa Solemnis(op. 123) and of the Ninth Symphony (op. 125). It took place on the 7th of May, 1824. The fact that when the performance was repeated on the 24th of May, spite of the additional attraction of the “adored” tenor, David, who sang Rossini’sDi tanti palpiti, (after so much pain), the house was half empty, shows that, after all, it was more curiosity to see the celebrated deaf man than real taste for art which had filled it the first time. Like Mozart, Beethoven did not live long enough to pluck even the pecuniary fruits of his genius. Not till 1845 did the magnanimous liberality of one who was really permeated by his spirit bring it to pass that a monument was erected to him in his native city, Bonn, as that same liberality has brought it to pass that one has been erected to him, in our own day, in his second home, Vienna. We have reference to the royal gift and to the equally rich playing of Franz Liszt.
It now became more imperative for him to give his attention to those compositions which promised him some immediate return, to the quartets, to write which he had received a commission from persons as noted for their generosity to him as for their love of art. These and the op. 127 occupy the first place in this brilliant constellation of art. “I am not writing what I should prefer to write. I am writing for the money I need. When that end is satisfied, I hope to write what is of most importance to myself and to art—Faust.” He thus expressed himself when engaged in the composition of the Ninth Symphony, and there was some talk of his writing an “Oratorio for Boston.” And so, likewise, the German Melusine and an opera for Naples, the Requiem, the tenth symphony, and an overture on B-A-C-H remained projects and no more. But they were also a great prospect for the future while he was engaged in the labors of the day; and they exercised no inconsiderable influence on the composition of the quartets themselves. The more he became interested in these works—and what works were bettercalculated to interest a composer of such poetic power—the more did these ideas become interwoven into the works themselves. They generated the peculiarly grand style and the monumental character which distinguish these last quartets. The soul-pictures from Faust especially are here eloquently re-echoed in the most sublime monologues. And, indeed, the Prince, who had given him the commission to write them, seemed to be the very man to induce Beethoven to achieve what was highest and best in art, even in such a narrow sphere. For he had so arranged it that, even before its production in Vienna, that “sublime masterpiece,” the Mass, was publicly performed. He informs us that the effect on the public was indescribable; that he had never before heard anything, not even of Mozart’s music, which had so stirred his soul; that Beethoven’s genius was centuries in advance of his age, and that probably there was not among his hearers a single one enlightened enough to take in the full beauty of his music. On the other hand, there reigned in Vienna that weak revelry of the period of the restoration, with its idol Rossini, a revelrywhich had driven all noble and serious music into the background. Besides, the Prince had ordered that the costs for musical composition should be curtailed “to any desired sum.”
Beethoven now went to work in earnest, and this composition was destined to be his last.
He had already made a great many drafts of the works above mentioned, one for op. 127 in the summer of 1822, one for the succeeding quartet in A minor (op. 131), in the year 1823, when he was completing the Ninth Symphony. Both op. 127 and the quartet in A minor remind us, in more ways than one, of the style of the Ninth Symphony—the latter by its passion so full of pain, the former, with itsadagio, where the longing glances to the stars have generated a wonderful, melancholy peace of soul. The immediately following third quartet (op. 130) stands out before us like a newly created world, but one which is “not of this world.” And, indeed, the events in Beethoven’s life became calculated more and more to liberate him, heart and soul, from this world, and the whole composition of the quartets appears like a preparationfor the moment when the mind, released from existence here, feels united with a higher being. But it is not a painfully happy longing for death that here finds expression. It is the heartfelt, certain and joyful feeling of something really eternal and holy that speaks to us in the language of a new dispensation. And even the pictures of the world here to be found, be they serious or gay, have this transfigured light—this outlook into eternity. There is little in the world of art, in which the nature of the religious appears so fully in its substance and essence without showing itself at any time otherwise than purely human, and therefore imperishable—never clothed in an accidental and perishable garb. This explains how a people not noted for any musical genius, but who are able to understand the spirit and meaning of music, the English, whom Beethoven himself esteemed so highly, considered his music “so religious.” And, indeed, his music is religious in its ultimate meaning and spirit. This character of his music finds its purest and most striking expression in the last quartets; and these quartets enable us tounderstand the saying of Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s truest pupil and successor, that our civilization might receive a new soul from the spirit of this music, and a renovation of religion which might permeate it through and through.
We now pass to an account of the details of the origin of these works.
The bitterness which Beethoven was destined henceforth to taste proceeded for the most part from his own relatives. “God is my witness, my only dream is to get away entirely from you, from my miserable brother, and from this despicable family which has been tied to me,” he writes, in 1825, to his growing nephew. We cannot refrain from touching on these sad things, because now, especially, they exercised the greatest influence on his mind and on his pecuniary circumstances, and because they finally led to a catastrophe which played a part in bringing about his premature death.
His weak and “somewhat money-loving” brother, Johann, had, indeed, in consequence of Beethoven’s own violent moral interference, married a silly wife. He found it impossibleto control her course, or even to get a divorce from her, because he had made over to her a part of his property, and was “inflexible” on this very point. And so the brother was not able, spite of many invitations, to induce Beethoven to visit him even once on his estate of Wasserhof, near Gneixendorf, on the Danube. Ludwig wrote him, in the summer of 1823: “O accursed shame! Have you not a spark of manhood in you? Shall I debase myself by entering such company?” Yet, his sister-in-law was “tamed” by degrees. But the mother of the boy continued, now that he was beginning to mature, to draw him into her own baneful circle, and, as Beethoven wrote in the summer of 1824, into the poisonous breath of the dragon; and levity, falsehood and unbecoming behavior towards his uncle, who was at the same time a father to him, followed. Carried away by the impulses of his moral feelings, the latter was severe even to harshness with the boy, and yet could not dispense with the young man’s company because of his increasing age and isolation. The natural craving for love, moral severity and the consciousness of paternal duty, wove thetexture of which our artist’s shroud was made.
The correspondence of this year, 1824, turns principally upon the pecuniary realization from his new, great works; for he wanted to be in London in the fall without fail. We have also a letter of his about his will, to his lawyer, Dr. Bach, dated in the summer. He writes: “Only in divine art is the power which gives me the strength to sacrifice to the heavenly muses the best part of my life.” We hear also the celestial sounds of theadagio, op. 127, ringing in our ears. He was himself filled with this true “manna;” for he exclaims in these same summer days, “Apollo and the muses will not yet allow me to be delivered over to the hands of death, for I yet owe them what the Spirit inspires me with and commands me to finish. I feel as if I had written scarcely a note.” And we even now find the sketches of those pieces expressive of a happiness more than earthly, or else, in gay irony, of contempt for the existing world, or of the mighty building up of a new world; thealla danza tedescaand thepoco scherzandoof op. 130, as well as the great fugue, op. 133, which was intended tobe the originalfinaleof op. 130, and which, by its superscription, “overture” and the gigantic strides in its theme, reminds us of the plan of theBachouverture. Even the unspeakably deep melancholy and, at the same time, blissful, hopefulcavatinaof the same third quartet op. 130, blossoms forth now from the feeling of his heart, which has taken into itself the full meaning of the eternal, and is filled with a higher joy. We here find, as in the last tones of Mozart’s soul, the germs of a new and deep-felt language of the heart, a real personal language, acquired to humanity for the expression of its deepest secrets, and which, in our own day, has led to the most touching soul-pictures in art—to the transfiguration of Isolde, and to Bruennhild’s dying song of redeeming love.
A mighty seriousness overpowers him. The desolate horrors that surround him endow him with the power to understand more clearly the higher tasks of the mind in which his art had a living part. We see plainly that his nature tends more and more towards the one thing necessary—“All love is sympathy,” sympathy with the sorrows of the world,says the philosopher. And so while his vision takes an immense sweep over the field of existence, we see that an inexhaustible source of patient goodness and of the kindest and most heartfelt love, springs up within him. “From childhood up it was my greatest happiness to be able to work for others,” he once said; and again when the overture, op. 24, was reproduced: “I was very much praised on this account, etc. But what is that all to the great Master of Tones above—above—above! rightly the Most High, when here below it is used only for purposes of ridicule. Most high dwarfs!!!” We here listen to the sublime irony of his tones in op. 130, but also to the lustrous mildness of theadagioof op. 127, in which in the little movement in E major, the human soul itself, filled with the spirit of the Eternal, so to speak, opens its eyes and looks upward. “I am what is, I am all that is, that was and that will be. No mortal man has lifted my veil. He comes from Himself alone, and to this Only One all things owe their existence.” Beethoven wrote out this Egyptian saying in this summer of 1824, framed it and placed it on his writing tablebefore him. He well knew what the really creative and preserving deity in human life is. That deity lived in his own most heartfelt thought and feeling. It was to him a continual source of bliss. It inspired his pen. To it he was indebted for the poetic creations which sprung unbidden from his brain.
The quartet in A minor, op. 132, belongs to the spring and summer of 1825. His journey to London had been postponed. Schindler gives as the reason of this, the “bad behavior of his dearly beloved nephew, which had become somewhat notorious.” How could his “son” be abandoned, thus unguarded, to “the poisonous breath of the dragon?” But as the invitation was renewed, the Tenth Symphony was again taken in hand, and from the sketches of it now made, we know all that is certain about it. It was intended to do no less than to add the “beautiful to the good,” to wed the spirit of Christianity to the beauty of the antique, or rather to transfigure the mere worldly beauty of the antique in the light of the superterrestrial. We find, indeed, a picture of this kind, a direct, intentional, higher picture of the world in theadagio,in modo lidico, in the second quartet. It is called the “Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity,” and is a choral between the repetitions of which, ever richer and more heartfelt, the joyful pulsations of new life are expressed. Beethoven had been seriously sick during this spring. His affection for his nephew had assumed, in consequence of one continual irritation of his feelings, the nature of a passion which tormented the boy to death, but which, like every passion, brought no happiness to Beethoven himself. The first movement of this quartet in A minor is a psychological picture—a poem of the passions—the consuming character of which can be explained only by this very condition of the artist’s own soul. And how Beethoven’s creations always came from his own great soul, that soul so fully capable of every shade of feeling and excitement! The account left us by the young poet, Rellstab, written in the spring of 1825, gives us a perfect description of the state Beethoven was in at this time. He describes him “a man with a kindly look, but a look also of suffering.” Beethoven’s own letters confirm the correctnessof this description. “In what part of me am I not wounded and torn?” he cries out to his nephew, whose frivolity had already begun to bear evil fruit. On another occasion he said: “O, trouble me no more. The man with the scythe will not respite me much longer.”
Notwithstanding this, however, or perhaps because of this extreme excitement of his whole nature, the summer of 1825 was very rich in productions. “Almost in spite of himself,” he had to write the quartet in C sharp minor (op. 131); after that in B flat major (op. 130). The last quartet also, that in F major, had its origin in that “inexhaustible fancy”—a fancy which always tended to the production of such works. Hence it is that the number of movements increases. The second has five; the third (B flat major), six; and the fourth (C sharp minor), seven—as if the old form of the suite, or thedivertimentoof the septet was to be repeated. But a moment’s comparison immediately shows the presence of the old organic articulation of the form of the sonata. These movements are in fact only transitions to, and connecting links between,two colossal movements. They increase the usual number of movements, although frequently nothing more than short sentences, and at times only a few measures. But the introductory movement and thefinalein the quartet in A minor loom up like the pillars of Hercules, and determine the impassioned character and the dramatic style of the whole. Beethoven himself called it a piece of art worthy of him. The same may be said of op. 130, when the great fugue, op. 133, is considered a part of it, which in our day it should always be conceded to be. And how immensely great is this spirit when, in the quartet in C sharp minor, it awakes from the most profound contemplation of self to the contemplation of the world and its pain.—“Through sorrow, joy!”
We must refer the reader to the third volume ofBeethoven’s Leben, published in Leipzig in 1877, for a detailed account of the desolation of our artist, produced by the narrow circle with which the restoration of Metternich and Gentz surrounded him, at a time when his own mind and feeling were expanding to greater dimensions than ever before. To the same source we must send him for adescription of the full earnestness and greatness of this last period in the life of our artist. In that work was for the first time presented to the public, from original sources, and especially from the records of Beethoven’s written conversations, extant in the Berlin library, the comfortless—but at the same time, and spite of continual torment, intellectually exalted—picture of his character. “Words are interdicted. It is a fortunate thing that tones are yet free,” wrote Ch. Kuffner, the poet of the oratorio,Saul and David, to him at this time—a work in which he wished to give expression both to his own relation as a human being to his “David,” and to the wonder-working nature of his art. The execution of this plan was prevented only by death. The general demoralization which had invaded Vienna with the Congress made its effects felt directly in his own circle, through the agency of his nephew, and thus paved the way for disaster to himself. “Our age has need of vigorous minds to scourge these paltry, malicious, miserable wretches,” he cries out at this very time to his nephew, who had permitted himself to make merry, in a manner well calculatedto irritate, at the expense of a genuinefaijak—as Beethoven was wont now to call the good Viennese—the music-dealer Haslinger; and the matter had become public. But he adds to the above: “Much as my heart resists causing pain to a single human being.” And, indeed, his heart knew nothing of such anger or vengeance. It was always a real sympathizer with the sorrows born of human weakness—a sorrow which with him swelled to the dimensions of the world-sorrow itself. To this feeling his op. 130 in B flat major is indebted for its series of pictures, in which we see the world created, as it were, anew with a bold hand, with the ironic, smiling, melancholy, humorous, cheerful coloring of the several pieces—pieces which, indeed, are no mere sonata movements, but full pictures of life and of the soul. Thecavatinaovertops it as a piece of his own heart, which, as he admitted himself to K. Holz, always drew from him “fresh tears.”
“Imitate my virtues, not my faults,” he implores his “son.” Speaking of the rabble of domestics, he says: “I have had to suffer the whole week like a saint;” and, on anotheroccasion, still more painfully: “May God be with, thee and me. It will be all over soon with thy faithful father.” His days, so strangely divided between the loftiest visions of the spirit and the meanest troubles of life, henceforth render him more and more indifferent to the latter. We find persons invade his circle whom otherwise he would never have permanently endured about him, and who frequently led him into minor sorts of dissipation even in public places. This reacted on the nephew, whose respect for the character of his “great uncle” could not long stand a course of action apparently like his own. But even now we see a picture in tones of which one of thefaijaks, the government officer and dilettante, Holz, who copied it, writes to Beethoven himself: “When one can survey it thus calmly, new worlds come into being.” We have reference to the quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131. “With a look beaming with light, dripping with sorrow and joy,” young Dr. Rollett saw him at this time in beautiful Baden, and, indeed, this work, which he himself called the “greatest” of his quartets, discloses to us, in a manner differentfrom the Ninth Symphony, the meaning of his own life, which he here himself, as Richard Wagner has said, displayed to us, a wild melody of pleasure and pain. But we now recognize more clearly that something “like a vulture is devouring his heart.” We, indeed, are drawing near to the catastrophe which led to his premature end.
As early as in the fall of 1825 he had witnessed “stormy scenes.” An uncontrollable love of gaming and a habit of loitering about the streets had led the young man into worse and worse courses, to falsehood and embezzlement. And when these were discovered, he secretly ran away from home. It was not long, however, before the loving weakness of his uncle called him back. The only effect of this was henceforth to condemn Beethoven himself to a slavish, too slavish life, one which would have been a torment even to an ordinary mortal, but which must have been doubly so to a passionate, great man who was deaf. The nephew found fault with his uncle, with his “reproaches” and “rows.” He accused him even of having led him into had company. He dreaded other reproaches still and wasafraid of even personal violence. At last, one day in the summer of 1826, the uncle received the frightful news that his son had left his dwelling with a pair of pistols, and intended to take his own life. A long and terrible morning was spent searching for the unfortunate youth, who was finally led home, with a wound in his head, from Baden. “It’s done now. Torment me no longer with reproofs and complaints,” he writes; and his disposition and feeling may be inferred from the words found in his conversation leaves: “I have grown worse, because my uncle wanted to make me better;” and from these others: “He said it was not hatred, but a very different feeling, that moved him against you.”
The uncle, alas! understood these expressions better than those about him. These had only words of reproach for the reprobate deed. “Evidences of the deepest pain were plainly to be seen in his bent attitude. The man, firm and upright in all the movements of his body, was gone. A person of about seventy was before us—yielding, without a will, the sport of every breath of air.” So wrote Schindler. Beethoven called for the Bible“in the real language into which Luther had translated it.” A few days later, we find in his conversations the following memorandum: “On the death of Beethoven.” Did he mean his own death, or the death of the beloved boy with whom he had, so to speak, lost his own life? Be this as it may, he now sang the deepest song of his soul, and it was destined to be his dying song. We refer to theadagioin the last quartet, op. 135. His harp soon after this grew silent, and forever. Henceforth we have only projects or fragments of works. But he touched it once more, like King Gunther in the Edda, “seated among serpents,” the most venomous of which—the pangs of his own conscience—menaced him with death. Among the pictures in which he paints the meaning of a theme similar to that of thisadagio(pieces thus independent of one another cannot rightly be called variations), there is one whose minor key and rhythm show it to be a funeral ceremony of touching sublimity. But whatever guilt he may have incurred he atoned for in his heart of hearts by love. Such is this picture. His soul is free. This the theme itselftells us, eloquently and distinctly. Here the soul, in melancholy stillness, revolves about its own primeval source, and towards the close plumes its wing for a happy, lofty flight, to regions it has longed to enter. The other pictures show us this full, certain and joyful possession of one’s self, and the last even seems to resolve the soul into its faculties when it floats about the Eternal Being in the most blissful happiness—a vision and condition which, of all the means of expression of the intellect, only music is able to describe, and which proves to us that, in the case of our artist, both fear and death had long been overcome.
And thus it comes that a movement with which there is none to be compared, one which to our feelings is the richest and most perfect of all movements, and, at the same time, of the most brilliant transparency, made its way into a work which otherwise shows no trace of the magnitude of this his last effort. For thefinaleis only a sham-play of those magic powers which our master so well knew how to conjure up, both in sublime horror and in saving joy.
But his physical condition was soon destined to be in keeping with the condition of his soul above described. When, indeed, Karl was convalescing as well as could be desired, and he had decided to follow the military calling, Beethoven’s friends noticed that, externally at least, he again looked fresh and cheerful. “He knew,” says Schindler, “how to rise superior to his fate, and his whole character bore an ‘antique dignity.’” But even now he told the old friend of his youth, Wegeler, that he intended “to produce only a few more great works, and then, like an old child, to close his earthly career somewhere among good men.” And, indeed, his whole inner nature seemed shattered. “What dost thou want? Why dost thou hang thy head? Is not the truest resignation sufficient for thee, even if thou art in want?” This one conversation with Karl tells us everything.
Besides, serious symptoms of disease appeared. A single blow, and his powerful, manly form was shattered like that of the meanest of mortals. And, indeed, that blow was struck with almost unexpected violence.
After his recovery, Karl was released bythe police on the express condition that he would remain in Vienna only one day more. His scar, however, prevented his entering the service. Where, then, could he go, now that the fall was just beginning? His brother, Johann, invited him to his Wasserhof estate near Gneixendorf. He could no longer answer as he had once:non possibile per me—impossible for me. But his sojourn in a country house not constructed so as to guard against the cold and dampness, a want of attention to his growing infirmity, misunderstandings with his brother’s wife, a violent quarrel with the brother himself, who, after it, refused him the use of his close carriage, and, lastly, his departure in the cold of winter in the “devil’s own worst conveyance.” All these causes conspired to send our patient back to Vienna, the subject of a violent fit of sickness. In addition to all this, his nephew delayed to call a physician, and none visited his sick bed until the third day after his return. The doctor who came was not Beethoven’s customary physician, and totally misunderstood the nature of the disease. Other shocks succeeded, and the consequence was a violent attack of dropsy, thesymptoms of which had first shown themselves in Gneixendorf.
His long, painfully long end was now beginning. His constitution, powerful as that of a giant, “blocked the gates against death” for nearly three months. As labor of any kind was out of the question, the arrival of Handel’s works from London, which came to him as a present, supplied him with the distraction he wished for, in his own sphere. It was not long before attacks of suffocation at night distressed him and it became necessary to perform the operation paracentesis. When he saw the stream of water gush forth, he remarked, with that sublimity of humor so peculiarly his own, that the surgeon reminded him of Moses, who struck the rock with his rod; but, in the same humorous vein, he added: “Better water from the stomach than from the pen.” With this he consoled himself. But he grew worse, and a medical consultation seemed necessary to his friends. His own heart forebode him no good, and he again made his will on the 3rd of January, 1827. He made his beloved nephew “sole heir to all he possessed.” The nephew had gone to joinhis regiment the day before, and this had a good and quieting effect on Beethoven. He knew that the young man would be best provided for there, and testified his gratitude to General von Stutterheim, who had received him, by dedicating to that officer his quartet in C sharp minor—his “greatest” quartet. He urged that Dr. Malfatti should be called. But he had had a falling out years before with him, and the celebrated physician did not now want to excite the displeasure of his colleagues. Schindler tells us: “Beethoven wept bitterly when I told him the doctor’s decision.”
But Malfatti came at last, and, after they had exchanged a few words, the old friends lay weeping in each other’s arms. The doctor prescribed iced punch to “quicken the organs of digestion, enervated by too much medicine.” The first physician who was called to attend him tells us: “The effect of the prescription was soon perceptible. He grew cheerful, was full of witty sallies at times, and even dreamt that he might be able to finish his oratorioSaul and David.” From his written conversations, we see that a great many of his friends had gathered about his bed. Hethought of finishing the Bach overture for one of Schindler’s concerts, and even began to busy himself with the Tenth Symphony once more. He had again to experience the feeling of pecuniary embarrassment while in this condition—an embarrassment now more painful than ever—brought about more especially by the necessity of procuring a military outfit for Karl. Gallitizin had, indeed, expressly promised a short time before to send him money, but he proved a “princely boaster;” and there was no prospect of an income from any other source. All his completed works had been sold, and the little fortune he had laid aside at the time of the Congress of Vienna was irrevocably pledged to Karl by his will.
His thoughts now turned to the “magnanimous” English, who had already promised him a “benefit.” His disease lasted a long time. The third operation had been performed. His long-continued solitude had alienated men from him in Vienna; and, especially after his experiences with theAkademiein 1824, he had no confidence in the devotion and enthusiasm for art of his second home. This induced Schindler to write to England: “Butwhat afflicts him very much is, that no one here concerns himself in the least about him; and, indeed, this total absence of interest in him is very surprising.” After this, we find only his most intimate friends at his bedside. Among these was Gleichenstein, who happened to be in Vienna on a short visit. He writes: “Thou must bless my boy as Voltaire blessed Franklin’s son.” Hummel, who was traveling and giving concerts, also saw him, and at the sight of his suffering—he had just undergone the fourth operation—burst into tears. Beethoven had, at the moment of Hummel’s visit, received a little picture as a present, and he showed it to him, saying: “See, my dear Hummel, the house in which Haydn was born—the miserable peasant hut, in which so great a man was born!”
He asks his Rhenish publisher, Schott, who had purchased his Mass and his Ninth Symphony, and who was destined one day to become the owner of theNiebelungen, for some old wine to strengthen him. Malfatti recommended an aromatic bath; and such a bath, it seemed to him, would surely save him. But it had the very opposite effect, and he wassoon taken with violent pains. He wrote to London: “I only ask God that I may be preserved from want as long as I must here endure a living death.” The response was one thousand guldens from the Philharmonic Society of that city “on account of the concert in preparation.” “It was heart-rending to see how he folded his hands and almost dissolved in tears of joy and gratitude” when he received them. This was his last joy, and the excitement it caused accelerated his end. His wound broke open again and did not close any more. He felt this at first a wonderful relief, and while he felt so he dictated some letters for London, which are among the most beautiful he has written. He promised to finish the Tenth Symphony for the Society, and had other “gigantic” plans, especially as regards his Faust music. “That will be something worth hearing,” he frequently exclaimed. The overflow of his fancy was “indescribable, and his imagination showed an elasticity which his friends had noticed but seldom when he was in health.” At the same time, the most beautiful pictures of dramatic poetry floated before his mind, and in conversation he alwaysrepresented his own works as filled with such “poetic ideas.” But his sufferings soon became “indescribably great. His dissolution was approaching” with giant steps, and even his friends could only wish for his end. Schindler wrote to London on the 24th March: “He feels that his end is near, for yesterday he said to Breuning and me: ‘Clap your hands, friends; the play is over.’” And further: “He advances towards death with really Socratic wisdom and unexampled equanimity.” He could well be calm of heart and soul. He had done his duty as an artist and as a man. This same day he wrote a codicil to his will in favor of his nephew; and now his friends had only one deep concern—to reconcile him with heaven. The physician approved, and Beethoven calmly but resolutely answered: “I will.”
The clergyman came and Beethoven devoutly performed his last religious duties. Madame Johann van Beethoven heard him say, after he had received the sacrament: “Reverend sir, I thank you. You have brought me consolation.”
He then reminded Schindler of the letterto London, “May God bless them,” he said. The wine he had asked for came. “Too bad! too bad! it’s too late!” These were his very last words. He fell immediately after into such an agony that he was not able to utter a single syllable more. On the 24th and 25th of March, the people came in crowds to see him again. Even thefaijaks, Hoslinger and Holz, as well as the poet Castelli, were among them. “All three of us knelt before his bed,” said Holz, subsequently, to Frau Linzbaur, who, in relating the incident, added that when Holz told it “his voice forsook him, and he covered his face and wept. ‘He blessed us,’ he said, with an effort; ‘we kissed his hand, but never saw him again.’” This was the last act of his life.
“On the 26th, the little pyramidal clock, which he had received as a present from Princess Christiane Lichnowsky, stopped, as it still does when a storm is approaching. Schindler and Breuning had gone to the churchyard, to select a grave for him. A storm of loud thunder and hail came raging on about five o’clock. No one but Frau van Beethoven and the young composer, AnselmHuettenbrenner, who had hurried hither from Graz to look upon his revered master once more, were present in the room of the dying man. A stroke of lightning illuminated it with a lurid flash. The moribund opened his eyes, raised his right hand, and looked up with a fixed gaze for several seconds: the soul of the hero would not out. But when his uplifted hand fell back on the bed, his eyes half closed. Not another breath! Not another heart-beat! It was I that closed the half-open eyes of the sleeper.” So says Huettenbrenner, an eye-witness of our artist’s last moment. This was the 28th of March, 1827.
“No mourning wife, no son, no daughter, wept at his grave, but a world wept at it.” These are the words of the orator of the day on the occasion of the unveiling of the first monument to Beethoven in 1845, in Bonn. But his funeral on that beautiful day in spring was a very brilliant one. A sea of twenty thousand human beings surged over the street where now the votive church stands; for in theSchwarzspanierhausbehind it, Beethoven had lived during the last years of his life. The leadingcapellmeistersof the city carriedthe pall, and writers and musicians the torches.
“The news of his death had violently shaken the people out of their indifference,” says Dr. G. von Breuning. And, indeed, it was, as a poor old huxtress exclaimed when she saw the funeral procession, “the general of musicians” whom men were carrying to the grave! The poet, Grillparzer, delivered the funeral oration. He took for his text the words: “He was an artist, and he was what he was only through his art.” Our very being and our sublimest feelings are touched when we hear the name of
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.